Help! 14 mth old taking at least an hour to go to sleep at night

Hi allMy 14 mth old DD can self settle but lately she is taking a minimum of an hour to get to sleep at night. She's not crying consistently during this time - just occasionally sqwarking and calling out, babbling, talking to herself etc. I think she's probably overtired but not sure what to do to fix it as she's transitioning from two sleeps to one.At the moment she sleeps through the night and wakes up at around 6.30. After that I put her back back to bed at 10am where she sleeps for a minimum of 2 hours. By about 3pm she's ready for another short nap but resists it in her cot so ends up being in the car. We then put her to bed for the evening at 7pm for the night and the fun begins!We've tried only letting her have one sleep from 10-12.30-ish but by 5pm she's hyper and will still take ages to go to sleep. We've tried putting her to bed later but it doesn't make much difference.We've also tried putting her to bed earlier with the same result.Maybe it's just a phase but it's driving us insane at the moment as the entire evening is spent going in and out of her room trying to settle her! Tonight she has been awake in her cot for 2 hours!What is your bub's routine?

My DD1 transitioned to one sleep aged 13 months (and at that point I wished I'd nudged her thataway sooner, as it was so much easier). DD2 was younger, maybe 11 months, I forget. I always went for an after-lunch day sleep (so around 12.30 or 1pm) rather than a morning one, as we were so often out at various activities during the mornings.

These days, DD2 (now 18 months, has been in this routine for several months now) wakes about 6, has her nap about 12.30 or 1, for a couple of hours, then goes down about 7.30 and sleeps the night (if you call waking every hour for a feed "sleeping", though recently she has made dramatic improvements in that regard).

Seems to me that if your DD is awake from 6.30am to 10am (3.5 hours), then from 12-3 (3 hours), then from 4-7 (3 hours), then it's no wonder she doesn't want to go to sleep at 7. Most babies only need about 12 or 13 hours sleep in total for the day by that age, don't they? I know mine have needed less than that. No way would my kids have slept that early if they had only been awake for 9 or so hours total during the day.

As an aside, things may improve as she becomes more mobile and can tire herself out more physically.

I think it's part of the 2-1 transition. DS is the same at the moment - can't make it through the morning to only have one nap, struggles to get a second nap. He's either overtired by bedtime or not tired enough (on the days that he gets a second nap).

I don't go in at all unless he's upset. He'll often be awake for 90 minutes, just talking to his teddy. I figure that if he needs the sleep, he'll fall asleep, and in the meantime the quiet time in his cot is relaxing and restful.

One day sleep is the way to go. Move it forward 20 mins every day until it's in the middle of the day and you've got two roughly equal periods of awake time. You might need to bring bedtime forward a little too for a while. It'll take a couple of weeks of her being ratty but she'll get used to it and everything will get back on track.

Agreed, mine has just been through this. On days where he has a late afternoon nap he will talk for an hour or so before going to sleep. He has slowly moved to having one nap starting at 11:30-12:30ish depending on what we are doing. He might seem tired at 10, but if I read him a book quietly and make sure he has a snack around then he can make it till after lunch to nap.

He can end up exhausted in the afternoon if he only has a short nap, so will have an earlier bedtime (closer to 6 than 7). He's been doing this a lot lately, but then has never been the world's best napper

It's a killer transition. We're doing it too, but lately he's refusing the second nap (and only napping for an hour in the morning) despite being exhausted and so it's grizzle grizzle while we try to cook, grizzle at dinner because he's too tired to eat, happy in the bath and then grizzle grizzle because he's overtired at bedtime. Babies.

"Hey, come here a second," my mum said as she replaced the book in my hands with a wooden spoon covered in what I prayed was red sauce. Together, we walked into the kitchen and hovered over the skillet like we were peering into a crystal ball. Looking into my future, I saw me eating a lot of take away.